HDD water damage

Hi

Due to a very unfortunate turn of events, two of my 1TB HDDs, full of important stuff, found their way into the washing machine :Doh:

They were fully submerged in water for several minutes before I noticed.
I'm currently drying them with heat.

Anyone know if the internal magnetic plates are isolated enough to prevent water getting inside?
I can replace the controller board from other identical units, but I'll do that only if there's a chance the internals (and motor) are dry & wont cause a short (or worse) :(

Cant believe this actually happened to me... :help:

Hmm thats hard to say, they are sealed pretty tight as a rule, often with a gasket of some kind. However I doubt it is 100% waterproof so id not risk turning them on until you open them up personally. Whether you see any signs of moisture or not id put them somewhere dry, cool and away from sunlight. Oh and a place where there's little dust about (kitchen is often the best place I find).

Im still confused as to how the hell that can happen :Doh:

I can tell you one thing HDDS are not air tight, they have to breath,

I would dry them out slowly as well, say in an airing coubard for a week or 2, last thing you want to do is warp the platers, then try them

I do not think opening up a modern day hard drive is a good idea, probably one dust can destroy it completely. they are air tight, so hopefully...

plz belive me when I say they are not air tight, ok so the air is filterd through a little pillow hehehhehe

b ut like you say you would`t want to open one unless you had a good idea in what way a HDD works

Unless you have a clean room, its not worth opening one.

Sounds like the job for a data recovery business.. not cheap though.

If your not gonna send off for recovery then nothing to risk with drying them for a few weeks and then firing them up.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by UberFreak

Anyone know if the internal magnetic plates are isolated enough to prevent water getting inside?
I can replace the controller board from other identical units, but I'll do that only if there's a chance the internals (and motor) are dry & wont cause a short (or worse) :(

Cant believe this actually happened to me... :help:

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If the data on these hdd's are so important for you don't even try to do something by your own.
You will just make thing worse.

Prepare about 3-4kEUR and go to special company that will restore all data in professional way.

This page: http://www.storagesearch.com/disklabs-art3-floods.html suggests not trying to recover data and to keep the drive wet before sending it to a recovery firm.

However, is it worth taking a minute to assess what exactly happened?

Did the drive definitely get wet? If the washing machine had just started its cycle, maybe it only drained and just filled during those few minutes. Perhaps the barriers to dust etc. may have kept the drive internals dry in that time? I am guessing that the machine was opened pretty soon after the drives started thumping around in the spinning drum. If there were clothes in there too they would have absorbed a lot of the water, so it is unlikely they would have been submerged for a significant time.

With that in mind, if the data is not worth the several grand it may cost to pay for a professional recovery, maybe it is worth trying drying up the logic boards and attempting to salvage as much as you can? This will probably fail and leave you with no data, but you might get lucky.

Water can dry on the platters leaving deposits and then the platters can start to rust. Ideally the drive needs to be opened up and each platter cleaned of deposits before attempting recovery.

If you wish I can have a look for you as I've done a couple of cleans/platter transfers in the past with success. However I will stress that whatever you decide it's wise to do it swiftly before anything starts to rust...

Chris